Bencore S.r.l.

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Bencore&reg; has developed an innovative technology for the manufacturing of honeycomb plastic panels, combining three characteristics: lightness, stiffness and transparency. Initially the product was meant for the marble and stone industry, with the idea of creating stone light panels with the same aesthetic content but much lighter. The weight has recently been an important issue in the building, transportation and naval industry worldwide. The investments in research and development allowed Bencore to manufacture a new product, a transparent honeycomb panel, known with the commercial name of Starlight. This new product combines lightness with structurality and light effects that attracted worldwide known architects and designers.</p>
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Starlight combines the core panel with coloured polycarbonate or acrylic sheets creating a &ldquo;personalized&rdquo; products. The Starlight panel has immediately had a great success among architects and designers and is used in very prestigious projects like the Bruges floating bridge by Architect Toyo Ito, the City of Water pavillion at the Art Biennale of Venice by Arch. Cecchetto. Starting from the end of year 2005 Bencore has widen its range of innovative products with Lightben. Lightben is an ultra-light weight composite panel that has resulted from the continuing research into honeycomb materials showing an appealing aesthetical look together with the typical characteristics of this kind of products: stiffness and light weight. Lightben is produced bonding a core made on polycarbonate cylinders to layers in polycarbonate, PETG or acrylic in various finishing and several colours.<br />
Lightben is a proposal for the more demanding companies and designers in the sectors of architecture, design of furniture, interiors, shops, offices, bar and stand fitting, but also for stage designing and any project where transparency and colour play a primary role. Indeed the Lightben particular core structure creates a partial transparency which varies according to the visual angle, while the external layers allow a variation in transmittance and colour shading of the light.<br />
The excellent workability with tools for thermoplastics and wood makes it easy to use it in a wide range of applications.</p>
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Lightben is proposed in a standard version with external layers in Acrylic clear or coloured, glossy or satin; in the CLASS version to be used where fire reaction certificate is required; UVP version to be used where the exposure to UV rays requires a superior protection of the panel. In 2007 Bencore has added to its products range another innovative honeycomb core composite panel: Hexaben coming from Bencore know-how on composite panels and on-going R&amp;D in materials and technologies. Hexaben is made of structural hexagonal honeycomb aluminium core laminated with acrylic, PETG or polycarbonate external layers (the range of colours and surface finishing is the same of Starlight and Lightben panels). Hexaben can be used in architecture and design applications like partition wall panels, doors, shelves, tables, lighting systems, ceiling panels. The possibility of fitting Hexaben with metal/plastic profiles, hinges, handles and other components and joining elements gives to designers and architect the opportunity to create a wide range of possible applications. Finally, another recent innovation is Plasticdetails (Pd3), a line of objects, lights and furniture made in Starlight and Lightben. The characteristics of the material (Starlight and Lightben), lightness, transparency, structural performance, durability, colour and brightness, allow to create easy, sober, elegant and at the same time lively, ironic and bright objects resulting in three different product lines: Class, Joy and Flash (www.plasticdetails.com).</p>